Last week, an exhaust pipe disenganged from Amber’s car. Yes, this is the car we just bought her for her 16th birthday. The muffler and exhaust system still looked fine, but two sections sorta came apart. Yesterday (Sunday), Amber and I headed out to AutoZone to fix it. At first, we joked about pushing the two disjoined sections together and wrapping it up with duct tape, but we realized that this wouldn’t do. We needed a more permanent solution.

We went into Autozone and bought a section of tubing to fit over the disjoined sections. It started to drizzle, and since I had to crawl under the car, I layed down a blanket on the wet ground and crawled under, keeping reasonably dry. The tube section was too narrow, so we had to return the tube and buy a wider one. Crawling onto the mostly dry blanket and under the car, I found that this one was too loose. Once again, we returned the part, and this time I bought a clamp.

The idea of the clamp was simple: push the two sections of pipe together, tighten the clamp between them, and – Viola! Good enough to pass inspenction in 38 states. Right?

Nope. I crawled onto the damp blanket and under the car, trying to clamp the two sections together. After 15 minutes of struggling and teaching my daughter a whole host of new swear-words, I realized that this elegant solution was not going to work. We went back into the store (the clamp was mangled – no returning that) re-bought another section of tubing and some . . . *sigh*. . . some duct tape.

I crawled onto the sopping wet blanket – a super-absobent blanket that was now, somehow, wetter than water, and crawled under the car. I jury-rigged the tubing and the clamp together, and duct-tapped the whole mess into place. We miraculously made it home without the entire exhaust system falling off.